On The Way!
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On The Way!

Brooklyn, New York, United States | Established. Jan 01, 2018

Brooklyn, New York, United States
Established on Jan, 2018
Band Jazz Experimental

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Music

The best kept secret in music

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Discography

Still working on that hot first release.

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Bio

On The Way! or 行者 (Xing Zhe) was formed in 2018 to commemorate the Tiananmen Massacre by Rose Tang, Daniel Carter, Evan Strauss, and Nathan Repasz. 

Tang, a Sichuanese-Mongol artist and former pro-democracy student leader who survived the massacre, began improvising with legendary New York free jazz horn player Daniel Carter (who has played with Cecil Taylor, Thurston Moore, Yoko Ono, Sun Ra, and many others) in 2014. Drummer Repasz and bassist Strauss (as the band GORPLORD) have collaborated with Carter on recordings and live shows since 2016. On The Way! officially formed for a June 2018 tour of California, performing at several Tiananmen vigils and ceremonies for those that fell to state violence in 1989. They continue to perform in the New York area and are currently planning a tour of the pacific northwest in summer 2019.

The band plays fully improvised free jazz in the lineage of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and electric Miles Davis. It also invokes the influences of its individual members, such as Tang's experience with dance/poetry and Chinese folk music, Carter's genre-transcending collaborations and mentorship, Repasz's experience as a choral singer, Strauss's education in sitar and Hindustani dhrupad music, as well as and each member's creative output as text artists.   

Free jazz is an idiom that is inextricably bound with struggles for liberation, particularly the black American experience. It is a natural and powerfully egalitarian expression of creativity that transcends cultural boundaries while still claiming a very potent cultural context. On The Way! strives to represent its various cultural traditions authentically and earnestly in an effort to resist state violence and oppression across the world.

Band Members